I should qualify this by saying that Erie is not *really* a super drivey dog, just more so than the dogs I am used to. Most of the Berners that I grew up with had pretty much zip in the way of prey drive, and my Kahaus left me rather spoiled in his ease of training: I didn't really have to try, I really *was* the most interesting thing in his surroundings outside.

My ego, then, took a bit of a bump from my Mr. Airhead, who is like a beagle in a Berner suit at times. He smells something and he must follow his nose NOW, with no interruptions. No physical barrier can stop him, least of all my puny upper body strength. When he's not following his nose or so super excited to get out the door that he can hardly contain his wiggles, he's actually an acceptable loose-leash walker.

I don't need every walk to be in perfect heel position. I'm interested in pursuing competitive obedience with him in the future, but I don't have the time right now. My current priority is simply having an intact bone structure when we return from walks to the park. Ideally, I'd like to have him just walk on a loose leash when we're around the neighborhood, attention heel in short spurts when we're in serious training mode (which he already does pretty well, it's just not sustainable or enjoyable for either of us on a long walk), and perhaps find some polite way of indicating that he'd like to sniff something beyond the current range of the leash before just diving for it. I'd like us both to enjoy our walks, and I have no problem dallying a bit so he can "read his newspaper," I just don't want to be dragged around the block for the latest story. :-P

So, for you obedience and rally folks, if I'm semi-interested in pursuing competitive obedience, but because of current work and school priorities just trying not to get my arm yanked off on a walk, how would you suggest teaching a dog the difference between a walk and a heel?

Also, impulse control: what do I do? Are there times when you just let your dog have a sniff and other times when you communicate that that's not what we're doing right now? Do you have a signal with your dog, where he can "ask" to peruse the area and you can say yes or no?

Haven't personally owned one, but I met a guy involved in the same sorts of Ren Faire events that my family used to do with two of them. BEAUTIFUL dogs. He said that the chewing stage is a little more dramatic with dogs that big, "Most puppies eat shoes. Mine eat through my drywall and consumed an entire $1,000 sofa."

I've also heard that their lifespans aren't much more than 4 years on average due to the prevalence, largely, of osteosarcoma. :-(

To give an idea of cost of feeding, a normal, adult dog is generally going to eat 2-3% of its bodyweight per day. So, figure out what the cost is of 4-6 lbs of the type of food you usually feed and that's the cost of feeding alone. And, keep in mind, if your other half wants a puppy, it will eat around TWICE that much during its adolescence!

I feed Erie mostly raw, with the occasional can of food or leftover supplement. He ate kibble when he came to me as a puppy and had consistent to occasional diarrhea, no matter what the quality of the food he was fed. We tried canned for a while, too, which was better, but still experienced occasional diarrhea and, no matter how much I fed him, he always scavenged around the apartment for more. He wasn't just normal "always hungry" dog, he behaved like he was RAVENOUS and hadn't eaten in days.

Since he;s been on raw, he'll still sniff around the floor to see if I've dropped anything, and happily cleans up any spills when I cook, but he doesn't act like he's never seen food in his life anymore. He consistently has solid stools and, since I buy meat and bones scraps from a farm for about 40% less than the cost of high quality processed dog food, my wallet is happy, too!

First, where the heck do you live and what do you eat that you spend $500/month on people food for two warm bodies? 0.0 I'm a college student, granted, so I'm on the "what's on sale" diet and I never eat out, but I manage to eat on $100/month max. Usually more like $80. And I live in the city. Sans Top Ramen, too. (Hate the stuff. Crock Pots, however, are magic, my friend!)

Second, feeding raw/homecooked can be as expensive or as cheap as you make it, depending on how you prepare your meals and how you source your ingredients.

Hint: do not buy meat from the grocery store, if you can avoid it. Many people save money by buying meat in bulk, portioning it out, and freezing it in a chest freezer. If you have the space for a chest freezer, more power to ya. I, personally, live in a studio apartment, so that's not doable for me. I rarely use my regular freezer for people food, though, so I purchase meat in one month increments (40 lbs-ish) and it fits quite nicely in regular, old box freezer that I have.

I save money by buying meat from a farm. They sell me meat and bone scraps from the butchering process for $1.50/lb, and I am able to buy hormone-free meat for people food there, too! It saves me a lot of money to cut out the middle man, and since I don't live that far from rural/semi-rural areas, I don't have to travel far to get to the farm. I feed my Bernese Mountain Dog for about $60/month, which is the same price as a mid-grade processed food where I live. Before you get sticker shock, think about the actual quantities fed. A 35 lb bag of dog food, fed at 3 cups/day would last me about 3 weeks, which would mean that I would pay about $65 per month to feed my Berner a food that costs $50 a bag. There is more to pricing dog food than meets the eye!(My dog can't seem to process kibble, though, so raw/homecooked is all he can eat, anyway.)

Here is a good website that helps cut the mystery out of raw feeding. Don't listen to pet food propaganda; if you can be trusted with your diet, you can be trusted to feed a dog!

Am I operating on dated advice? I've always been told to avoid feeding puppy food to large breeds beyond about 6 months of age for the same reason a prior poster cited to KEEP feeding it to them, namely: joint problems. The increased level of calcium, I was told, that is normal for medium/average sized dogs is not good for a large breed puppy's growing joints.

Kali, yes Erie also never seems satisfied when he eats. We have three fruit-bearing trees in our backyard behind the dog run and, every opportunity he gets, he gets back there and gorges himself on unharvested plums. I pick up a lot of pit-laden poop. I have wondered if his body is craving more fiber in his diet, as it seems to help the consistency of his stools. He occasionally "lays a foul egg" so to speak, but he doesn't seem to have acute flatulence.

My grandmother is a breeder, and my cousins, brother, and I grew up living on and off in her house. She has dabbled in a few different breeds at different times, but the Berners have always been around, ever since I was about 5. She used to have Saint Bernards before that (and a few Newfoundlands at one point), but then she discovered that Berners were all the fur, love, and gentle-giant-ness, without all that DROOL! Never looked back.

While I have lived with a gazillion dogs in my life, I've personally had a Yorkie, a fluffy Cardigan Welsh Corgi, and two male Berners. While I am now inclined to believe that the whole purebred shtick in general is not good for our dogs (it's a genetically unsound method of categorizing and breeding animals that's based on a VERY dated, Victorian model), I love me some big, handsome alpine dogs. Hopefully someday they will just be big, fluffy, alpine dogs, rather than a specific breed, as this whole inbreeding thing is killing these babies off like flies. Roughly 50% of Berners die of cancer, most of histiosarcoma.

Perhaps you're right. I'll admit that it just seemed too ironic to have a dog with potentially the same issues that I've been suffering from for years.

I have been part of the big rawfeeding group on Yahoo! for the past couple of weeks as I look into different options for Erie. It is heartening to see people with raw success stories who don't feed elaborate, expensive BARF diets like those that were popular when I first started reading about it ten years ago. The supposed complexity and expense of feeding raw is what initially scared me off of feeding it 100%.

I have always supplemented with raw chicken, beef, and (I tried at one point) fish. The fish DID NOT go over well (major diarrhea!), but he always handles the beef and chicken well.